Marketing whiz Seth Godin is right when he says that the thank yous dished out at the beginnings of conferences, large meetings, and other confabs are usually inelegant, rushed, and ineffective, boring the listeners and not really crediting the helpers. His suggested fix is to take or grab pictures of those you want to thank, and put on a looping slideshow ten minutes before the gabbing starts:

Put each photo on its own slide, preferably with a well designed ID below it (it should be on a black box, with a nice sans serif font reversed out. Like you see on cable TV news) ... String one after the other. Build a dissolve transition between each one. Program it to put up a new slide every two seconds—don't go too slow!—and to loop the presentation.

Godin's idea makes good sense not only for presentations and conferences, but any occasion where you're merely the ambassador of a lot of helpful folks' work. Got your own way of making due gratitude less perfunctory? Let's hear it in the comments. Photo by Lachlan Hunt.